Marcel Gauchet and the Crisis of Democratic Politics

Natalie J. Doyle is Adjunct Senior Research Fellow in French Studies at the Faculty of Arts, Monash University, Melbourne. Dr Doyle has researched European social and political thought, both classical and contemporary, with particular reference to interpretations of modernity. Through a series of articles, book chapters, translations with critical introductions, and a monograph, she has established her international profile as a leading specialist of Marcel Gauchet’s political philosophy.Sean McMorrow is managing editor of Parrhesia: A Journal of Critical Philosophy. He teaches at the University of Melbourne and the Melbourne School of Continental Philosophy.

"Deeper engagement with the work of Marcel Gauchet is important for both social science and understanding the contemporary world and its crises. In this volume, Doyle and McMorrow combine translations of new work by Gauchet with astute and timely discussions of how his work informs contemporary debates on democracy. It should be widely read."Craig Calhoun, Arizona State University"Slowly but surely, Marcel Gauchet is being recognised as a key thinker whose work is a vastly more insightful account of the modern condition than the fashionable canon of "French theory." He has published path-breaking analyses of twentieth-century totalitarianisms as well as of the more recent neo-liberal turn. This collection of critical essays on various aspects of his thought, accompanied by two of his most representative shorter texts, is a landmark in the English-language debate around Gauchet´s interpretation of democracy, its preconditions and its contemporary problems."Johann P. Arnason, La Trobe University/Charles University

• Preface: Why Read Marcel Gauchet? Introduction: Marcel Gauchet: His Work in Context Part I: Marcel Gauchet and the Contemporary Crisis of Democratic Politics 1. Democracy from One Crisis to Another 2. Populism as Symptom Part II: Insights into Marcel Gauchet’s Exploration of Political Modernity 3. Marcel Gauchet and the Eclipse of the Political 4. The Political Forms of Modernity: The Gauchet-Badiou Debate over Democracy and Communism 5. Marcel Gauchet’s Political Anthropology: Originary Social Division and the ‘Processual’ Autonomy of a Community Part III: Reflections on Marcel Gauchet’s Analysis of Contemporary Democratic Culture 6. The Political History of Individualism 7. Human Rights, Legal Democracy, and Populism 8. Juridification: Liberal Legalism and the Depoliticisation of Government 9. Thinking the Populist Challenge with and Against Marcel Gauchet Part IV: Applying Gauchet's Analysis of Liberal Democracies: Beyond the Crisis? 10. The New World of Neo-Liberal Democracy